Friday, August 13, 2010

AfterBollystalgia and others curate a collection of Sridevi's finest works (define as you wish), I will be more than happy to dig into her filmography. But before? No. Hell no.

The Sridevi films I am able to get my hands on tend to be from my own personal Era of Doom, i.e. circa 1984 to 1998, Mr. India aside, and as much as I want to participate in group projects and learn more about a star with whom I am so ill-acquainted, I even more want to avoid-yaar the pants off of 1984-1998 unless guided with precision and care. So with no DVDs handy but wanting to contribute, I decided the safest approach for me was to explore clip by clip. Lured by Temple and others who have a taste for outrageous and spectacular song picturizations, lately I've been wading far into the depths of youtube by clicking link after link in that ominous but irresistible column labeled "suggestions." My experiences in the never-ending cinematic Choose Your Own Adventure of remarkable, if not always perceptibly affiliated, links made me confident there would be a ton of inspiring Sridevi songs and scenes out there for me to write about. But how to choose? The connections between the principal video on a page and the suggestions youtube throws up (ahem) are not always clear to me, but in the spirit of discovery and wonder - of -palooza! - I wanted to avoid getting a chain of clearly associated clips, like a group of songs from the same film or all featuring Sridevi with the same hero. Instead, I went with a random approach.

Yesterday, my simple search on youtube for "Sridevi" yielded approximately 5,180 hits.I then used a random number generator to pull 5 numbers between 1 and 5,180 to create my list of videos to write about during Sridevipalooza. However, apparently youtube will not actually pull up the hits after 1,000, so I had to run the number generator a few more times to get 5 selections between 1 and 1,000.

Stay tuned over the upcoming week to explore these random treasures with me! The stops along our journey span the 80s and 90s and include the curious "part 15" of a film in addition to the expected songs. Among our traveling companions are usual suspects Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Jeetendra, and Mithun. And as a video teaser, here's #6 in my random selections:

jaunty flapping side-by-side steps with Jeetendra in "Baagon Ki Tu Rani" from Jaani Dost (1983). Try to make it past his tight-white-jeans-encased thrusts at 0:20 to revel in the really subtle symbolism from the natural world and the really silly musical effects from the synthesized world of Bappi Lahiri. In addition to the completely unexpected cameo at 1:20 - seriously, it's worth it, I promise (especially for you, Todd!) - this movie also stars Dharmendra, Parveen Babi, Bob Christo, and Tom Alter, and dangit now I think I might actually need to watch it. CURSE YOU, INTERNET!*

Beth, it's like you can READ my MIND. Sepia Mutiny had a link to a Sridevi song in a recent post (the awesome and amazing "Main Teri Dushman" from Nagina), and it made me think that I really need to watch some Sridevi movies. Except -- which?! Other than Mr. India, I don't know where to start. So I love your YouTube spelunking idea, and I'm definitely going to try to follow Sridevipalooza everywhere it occurs. It's for my own good.

@Bombay Talkie -- Exactly! I feel the same way. I watched Main Teri Dushman and was just enthralled. She's amazing, and now I'm sorry that the only '80s Bollywood movie I've seen is Mard. (Which I love, because it's awesome, of course. But I've missed out on Sridevi! Until now.)

my other filmi projects

Bong Along - a blog on vintage Bengali movies co-written by Indie Quill and me (and perhaps a few very friendly appearances by other friends as well).

Masala Zindabad - the podcast by Indie Quill and me, often featuring other writers and fans as guests. Masala Zindabad is an affectionate and thoughtful look at the broad range of themes that define Bollywood and make Bollywood defy definition. Available at iTunes.

Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit - the Agents of M.O.S.S. are a shadowy confederation of like-minded writers, broadcasters, creators, and jetsetters who have banded together in a bold mission to bring international intrigue and pop entertainment to the masses. Can anyone stand in the way of their diabolical schemes?

pragmatics

Text (c) 2005–2014, Beth Watkins. The ideas and opinions expressed in this site are mine alone unless otherwise attributed. They do not necessarily represent the views of my employer or of any other organization or website with which I may be associated.